Pokemon Gen 1 Gym Leaders by Bravefarm2

Concept art for 101 Dalmatians (1961) by Ken Anderson

Yule art that puts me in the holiday spirit!l

Michael Kerbow, Esther Remmington

Renae Taylor art, Margaret Ellis

Renae Taylor arts, L. Helje

Julien Hatswell, Briar

Wendy Andrews, Lynn Bywaters art

The Creatures of Yuletide: The Hidden History of the Christmas Goats

How Christians allowed pagan goat symbolism into their sacred holidays

Back in 2020, I started a series of posts here called Creatures of Yuletide, diving into the strange world of the creatures and magical figures that are said to appear during the holidays. However, there were some creatures and some interesting pieces of lore that I left unexplored, so now that I’m on my break from college, I’m thinking about bringing the series back for this holiday season.

I consider this piece a companion to my posts about Krampus, the Yule Goat, and the Companions of St. Nicholas, explaining things that I got wrong or thought were left unclear.

Let's start with my biggest complaint about the portrayal of Krampus in modern media: Why is he always a villain?

Originally an obscure character of regional European traditions, Krampus exploded in popularity in the late 2010s, quickly becoming a stock villain in cheap Christmas horror films, usually portrayed as a common demon or as a demon doppelganger of Santa Claus.

The fact is, that the tradition of Santa Claus started with St. Nicholas appearing on the eve or right on the day of his feast distributing some sweets, oranges, and nuts to children. However, these treats were only for good children. The bad children received a visit from a scarier and more threatening figure that would follow the saint. Usually, this figure would be represented by someone in fur clothes, with horns, and with a mask or a painted face. Depending on the region and country the identity of this dark companion varied.

In Austria, he was our demon Krampus

In Germany, he was a scary man called Knecht Ruprecht.

In French, he was Père Fouettard, Father Whipper, a dark figure connected to a butcher that killed three children in St. Nicholas’ legends.

In the low countries he was the controversial Zwarte Piet, where instead of a demon or a creepy man covered in soot, he’s a black servant boy, represented by a white person in blackface.

If you take Krampus' depiction at face value it’s easy to see him as a villain, since his and all the other companions’ shtick is to threat bad-behaved children with physical punishment and dragging them to a worse place. But if you look at the origins of the tradition you see a more interesting and much more nuanced view.

The people of the Alpine region and central Europe, in general, had a tradition of dressing in fur clothes and wearing wooden masks with horns. That was deeply connected with Frau Perchta, another dark yuletide figure from the Alpine region that was a goddess before Christianity arrived.

Perchten is the plural of Perchta. Originally, the word referred to female masks representing her, but the name come to refer to the animal masks worn in parades and festivals in the mountainous regions of Austria.

People would masquerade as these devilish figures and march in processions known as Perchtenlaufs. The Church didn’t like these creatures and tried many times to ban these practices, but due to the sparse population and the rugged environments within the region, the ban was useless.

Now depicted as a simple Christmas ornament in Scandinavian countries, the Yule Goat and similar other figures were probably offsprings of this tradition.

When the Christians showed up, small bits of these traditions remained, as an act of resistance, but little by little these people started adding Christian contexts to them, and Christians begrudgingly accepted them.

St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children. His saint day falls in early December, which helped strengthen his association with the Yuletide season. A seasonal play that spread throughout the Alpine regions was known as the Nikolausspiel, "Nicholas play". In these plays, St. Nick would make questions about morality and reward children for their scholarly efforts. Eventually the Perchtenlauf, in an attempt to pacify the Church, introduced Saint Nicholas and his set of good morals.

During the 17th century, in Sweden, it was the costume that during Christmas or the Epiphany (The Three King’s Day), young men in costumes would walk between houses singing songs, enacting plays, and performing pranks. The Yule Goat would often appear in these pranks, usually as a scary figure demanding gifts.

Eventually, these animal costumes soon became boogeyman figures that would follow St. Nicholas in punishing bad children. From place to place, the shape and identity of the companion changed, in some places staying a demon-like creature like Krampus, in others becoming fully human, like Zwarte Piet and Knecht Ruprecht.

It’s also important to point out that in some places, the goat creature absorbed St. Nicholas completely and became the gift-bringer himself. That’s the case with the Yule Goat. During the 19th century, men would often dress as goats to give gifts to their families. In Finland, to this day, the word for Santa, Joulupukki, translates to "Christmas goat" or "Yule Goat".

So why did all of these people dressed like goat monsters during wintertime?

Protection of course!

Thanks to electricity and heating we tend to forget how unforgiven winters in Northern Europe were. Winter was considered a time of darkness and death, and similar to Halloween, there was this belief that during winter the barrier between the worlds weakened. It was believed that ghosts and other evil spirits and entities could come to our world. There were several stories about entire spectral legions bewitching and spiriting away people in the dead of night. People dressed in these masks and costumes to scare these evil spirits.

In the 16th century, the Perchten took two main forms: Schönperchten, "beautiful Perchten", or the Schiachperchten, "ugly Perchten”. The beautiful Perchten came during the twelve nights of Christmas and festivals to bring luck and wealth to the people. The ugly Perchten had fangs, tusks, and horse tails that were used to drive out demons and ghosts. Men dressed as the ugly Perchten during this time and went from house to house driving out bad spirits.

The Norwegian had the tradition of “Julebukking” or more correctly, “to go julebukk” (Gå julebukk). One man or many men from the community would dress in a goat mask and fur cape to represent the ghosts of a winter night. After that, they would go “trick or treating” from door-to-door receiving gifts from the towns folk to thank them for protection and keeping the winter ghosts at bay

Today, in some parts of Finland, the custom persists of people performing in goat costumes in return for leftover Christmas food.

From the Smithsonian Magazine: A man dressed in a traditional Perchten costume and mask performs during a Perchten festival in the western Austrian village of Kappl, November 13, 2015. Each year in November and January, people in the western Austria regions dress up in Perchten (also known in some regions as Krampus or Tuifl) costumes and parade through the streets to perform a 1,500 year-old pagan ritual to disperse the ghosts of winter. (DOMINIC EBENBICHLER/Reuters/Corbis)

Krampus and all the other Christmas goats aren’t evil. They are wild, but not evil. They aren’t even demons, that’s part of the Christianization and the demonization of them. In the proper context of their cultures, they are defenders of people, having their origins in a tradition that consists of scaring away malevolent winter spirits.

The idea of Krampus as the last remnant of a pagan world, protecting people from evil spirits that the modern world forgot existed, to me, sounds much more original than another cheap Christmas horror movie where Krampus is the bad guy.

@ariel-seagull-wings @thealmightyemprex @amalthea9 @tamisdava2

Finally, I’m done witht this serie. It’s all printed and available in my Etsy Shop for anyone interested ! I’m really happy with the quality of the prints !!

• Etsy Shop link for the posters •

I present to Tumblr, "Hylians Kitchen" (or re-present, not sure if this all ready made the rounds years ago when BOTW launched 🤷‍♂️) Artist is unknown, it was merely sent to me by my nephew, but if anyone knows the artist, or you are the artist, and want it taken down, please reach out! 😊 Otherwise, please enjoy!

i love that this is official art- it’s so cute ♥︎

A little birch tree Korok merchant who you can usually find at kakariko village! mostly selling mushrooms/fruits/veggies and is meticulous with their notes.~

master sword

remember, this is for a DOOR lock.

remember that when picking a DOOR lock, you have to apply a little bit of pressure to your tension wrench (the thing that you use to turn the knob). too little or too much and you wont be able to pick the door open. you can use anything for the tension wrench. a bobby pin. bits of wire. a paper clip. etc.

its best to be completely silent when youre picking locks bc theres this small ‘click’ when youre picking that you might miss if youre using headphones or listening to music.

.

if youre picking one of these

you jam something thin and long above one of the rotation dials and you push up on the shackle.

. if its one of these

you get yourself some shims. (or make one. you can make shims out of fucking soda cans), you wiggle them in the tiny space between the shackle and the body of the lock, and you pop these suckers open.

. for a chain deadbolt,

you get something flexible but sturdy and you just push this fucker down

. for one of these rotating combination locks

you can also shim this motherfucker open. jam your shims between the shackle and the body and pry it unlocked. if, for some reason, you dont wanna shim it open, maybe you dont have a shim or you just like a challenge, this bitch can be decoded ridiculously easy. heres what you do:

spin this bitch to the right about two or three times to “reset” it. then you pull up on the shackle a bit, and turn it right slowly until you hear a click. your number is two spaces further. then you turn left 360 degrees until you land on the right number again, and start turning this motherfucker left until it stops. when it stops, turn right. if its loose, its the wrong number, keep going left. if its not loose, you have the right number, and you turn right all the way until this bitch pops

.

now you know how to pick several common locks!!!!! congratulations!!!!

don’t mind me im just reblogging

Yall need to look up the Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube too, he’s amazing.

His videos are always so blazé, like ‘here’s yet another fucking disappointing lock to pick’ and he’s so good.

@cackledaddy

just for your viewing interest

Completely innocent reblog

The most non suspicious reblog

Never know when this might be useful to someone for reasons.

Not all of which are illegal reasons.

That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

Follow @the-future-now

Reblog if you:

No one will know which is it

This guy inspired me to repair my own macbook. First of all, you should know that I am not… like, I have to look up HOW to look up what my computer specifications are. Tech, that ware either soft or hard, is not a subject in which I experience comfort or competence. But my puppy peed on my keyboard, and I asked the apple store, or the fucking mac cafe, or the godsdamn Computer House Chill Zone or whatever cute ass name they have for their bullshit store, and they said it would be TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS TO REPLACE MY KEYBOARD. I’m not even exaggerating.

So I asked the internet, well how hard IS it to repair? And I saw this guy’s video, and while I am no techie, I AM fueled by spite, so I was all “oh, they do that shit on purpose specifically so they can charge me $1200 bucks or make me buy a new computer hunh? FUCK THEM” and I bought all the tools I needed for about $25 and I bought all the parts I needed for about another $25 and I watched a few tutorial videos, and I replaced my own keyboard.

So, once you are doing the actual deed, it becomes pretty obvious that they are finding creative ways to make this much harder than it has to be on purpose. On thing that stood out to me is, instead of all the tiny screws being the same size, there are about two dozen very slightly different sizes. They could easily be all the same size, or like, two sizes at most, but no.

These mother fuckers will take a panel that screws into place and they’ll use a different size screw for each corner. They are so close that you almost cannot tell them apart visually, but they each will only screw into the matching corner. Like, it’s a pretty clear “fuck you” to anyone trying to do repairs.

anyway, this guy is also fueled by spite, and doing holy work, and I have mad respect

This is awesome. Man is doing good ass deeds 24/7 because he’s giving people control.

How dare you not leave a link to his channel, this guy is the savior of the modern world.

Never underestimate the power of spite

Never, ever believe in corporate self regulation.

Also fuck apple.